Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist, is known for exposing abuses of China’s one-child policy. His case has worked its way through the courts in Shandong’s Yinan County. Potential witnesses have been beaten and evidence suppressed in Chen’s August trial and his retrial by the county court on charges of inciting the public. The charges stemmed from a public protest by his supporters. However, human rights groups have said authorities trumped up those charges to silence Chen after he accused Linyi officials of forcing women to be sterilised and have abortions as late as eight months into their pregnancies. Chen, who has been held for over a year, was sentenced to more than four years in jail recently following the retrial.

Yuan Weijing, the wife of the jailed Chinese activist is in hospital with bruises and “extreme mental distress” after being assaulted by police in Linyi city. Police had dumped Yuan on a street outside the city later that day where she was found crying and dazed. She has bruises to her chest and has not spoken for days. As reported, Yuan was picked up by police seeking “revenge” for her attempts to introduce evidence in the retrial that purportedly exonerates Chen of the charges.

And on Thursday, one Bharati Das, wife of a poor farmer with barely one and a half acre land in Singur, by now famous as the site of Tata Motor’s prestigious Rs one-lakh car project narrated her owes, tears welling up as she spoke about police brutality. She displayed her bandaged hand and narrated how drunken policemen barged into her house, nearly molested her and beat up her young son. And all that was for one-and-a-half acre which has kept her family going for years that now the Buddha Babu’s government wishes to hand over to Tata Motors.

Everyone acquainted with working of West Bengal knows the atrocities of the Marxists against the opposition parties. This time it is happening to acquire the land for Tata Motors in Singur. And the police are with them in name of law and order.